Monthly Archives: August 2011

A National Housing and Transportation Affordability Index

By Jason Lally | Published: August 31, 2011

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced yesterday that they’ve awarded a 2 year contract to Manhattan Strategy Group (MSG) and our friends over at the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) to develop a national Housing and Transportation  (H+T) Affordability Index.  CNT developed an H+T Affordability Index for 337 Metro regions; this contract [...]

Posted in Lab | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments closed

Esri calls for GeoDesign case studies

By Jason Lally | Published: August 24, 2011

I recently received a request to post a call for case studies from a colleague at Esri, Shannon McElvaney.  The announcement is quoted below.  You can see some an example of our work in Cape Cod written up by Ken here, or watch an interview with Matt Baker on GeoDesign, or take a look at [...]

Posted in Lab | Tagged , | Comments closed

PlaceMatters at the White House: Suburbs and Sustainability

By Jacob Smith | Published: August 22, 2011

The short version of our White House story: inner ring suburbs have to be a central part of the conversation about sustainability in metro regions. The longer version . . . PlaceMatters had an unusual and exciting opportunity last month to spend a day at the White House, presenting on a panel during the Forum [...]

Posted in Institute | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments closed

PlaceMatters Blog Roundup: August 19, 2011

By Jacob Smith | Published: August 19, 2011

EngagingCities reviews IBM’s new city modeling tool, Systems Dynamics for Smarter Cities, concluding that it “offers a very robust model for exploring outcomes and planning beyond immediate and obvious results,” but also noting the importance of a complementary engagement strategy. Rob Goodspeed, also reflecting on the new IBM tool, posted some ruminations on the use [...]

Posted in Institute, Lab, Solutions | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments closed

Mapping the Community Decision Process

By Jacob Smith | Published: August 18, 2011

The conventional and very traditional rational decision model posits a sequence like this: Science (or information) => Process (or politics) => Decision As anyone who works with community decision making knows, the world doesn’t really work that way (even when the legal structure, say a NEPA process, tries to make it do so). A more [...]

Posted in Institute | Tagged , | Comments closed

Creating Resilient Communities: Sharing the Lessons

By Jacob Smith | Published: August 16, 2011

One of our most interesting and most ambitious (as well as longest-running) projects of recent years was the Creating Resilient Communities effort in South Carolina. This natural hazard mitigation planning effort was regional in scope (including a bunch of jurisdictions), cross-sector in its span (local governments, federal agencies, nonprofits, community groups), complex in its subject [...]

Posted in Solutions | Tagged , | Comments closed

PlaceMatters Blog Roundup: August 11, 2011

By Jacob Smith | Published: August 11, 2011

Between presentations at the White House and the Ford Foundation’s 75th anniversary gala (we’ll blog about both of these soon), tons of amazing projects (we’ve got a team in the New River Valley of rural southwestern Virginia at this very moment), and just the general zaniness of summer we’ve got quite a backlog of great [...]

Posted in Institute, Lab, Solutions | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments closed

A Walkshop to Remember: Reflections on the Inner Belt Brickbottom Walkshop

By Matthew Weinstein | Published: August 8, 2011

I came to PlaceMatters this summer from Somerville, Massachusetts, a Boston-area city best known as Cambridge’s slightly grittier, more affordable, and no-nonsense neighbor to the north.  I’m a proud two-time resident of Somerville, and in my time there I’ve gotten to know my adopted hometown—the most densely-populated municipality in New England—block-by-block, one triple-decker and Brazilian [...]

Posted in Institute, Solutions | Tagged , , , | Comments closed